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A question I ask myself, why make records? And why in particular did I make this record? I've made lots of records, about half of them shared with the world, the other half squirreled away for no good reason.

Songs upon songs upon songs.
But I guess in the end I just had some stories to tell, like the one about the cop turned cocaine dealer, or the murderous 13 year old girl, or the underage lovers who steal her mom's checkbook, her dad's truck and go on a spree down the west coast, free as the wind, until it becomes clear the boy is addicted to heroin, the physical freedom outstripped by enslavement to the substance. And but lets not forget the one about the woman in the black TransAm who steals hearts from wrecked/jaded men deep in their cups, another form of internment. Stories upon stories.
Each story is true in some sense.

So I guess I have my reasons for making a record. For adding to the overwhelming fetid deluge of content running wild, pushing at the banks of cultural consciousness for no good reason. And really the value of a record seems to be increasingly non-monetary. As it should be I guess, the true craft, the reality of music, of voice, is played out on stages across the country, not in bluetooth earbuds.

And so 10 years after Furr, a record that touched a vein and continues to, the song itself more widely known than the band that made it, after 10 years of touring with Blitzen Trapper, after all the drug busts, run-ins with the law, drunken nights/fights/wrecks, flings with fans/groupies/angels, run ins with demons/criminals/saints, TV appearances, court appearances, disappearances, what do we have to show for it?
Nothing much that can be physically pointed to, it's more a feeling. A cerebral kind of currency, of having communed/partaken/contributed to the dialogue of rock music, of the musical arts as well as a sense of America as a whole. This country like a willfully ignorant child, blind to its faults, not knowing how good it has it, half-heartedly adhering to a God that no longer exists, its leadership nothing but a mirror held up to its own fat misshapen face. To possess this sense, this knowledge is worth its weight in gold. This is the true meaning of that genre we are a part of, what we call Americana.

We recently created a theater event that ran for a couple months in our hometown of Portland, OR called Wild and Reckless, half musical, half rock-opera dealing with heroin abuse, desperation, True Love and western power structures. Heady as shit, but in the end as it unfolded I realized it was really about music, that longing for escape, that pure juvenile psychedelia we possessed as kids laying in summer grass gazing up at the clouds in the sky seeing shapes in them, imbuing them with a reality that was not really there but that we saw it and named it. Stories upon stories.

This resultant album Wild and Reckless is a companion to Furr, a second volume in that wild dystopian reality of killers and shape-shifters, and there is a running narrative to it that, like its companion Furr hinges upon Love, love lost, found, hidden. That's the center, the Heart of the matter and all the stories upon stories revolve around it like a menagerie of rocks around a burning sun.

This record was written mostly in the summer of 2016 in my apartment off of Trinity Lane. A few tunes came out on the road as well. After moving out of an ex's house, I settled into a new neighborhood down the road. Shortly after, I picked up a tour with my good friend John Moreland where we went to the West Coast and back. I was trailing them in my little 2002 Honda Accord that has literally been all over the country with me. A woman in my early 30s, I found myself sick of my same old shit. I was inspired by the landscape of the west. My faith was tested on the curves of the Highway 101 through the Red Woods. I got terrifyingly stoned on weed gummy bears in Denver. I saw real cowboys in Wyoming and drove through a flood in Arkansas. I felt displaced, but connected. Upon returning to the south, my home of Tennessee, I slunk back into my nook off of Trinity. I went over all the things I'd seen. There had been a freedom in being so far away - a lack of responsibility, a distance from some of the issues, if you will, though I'd carried them right with me, back to my birthplace of Los Angeles, peering over the ocean, wondering how you can come so far yet end up in the same place. I contemplated fleeing and just staying in California, but the south is my home and I had to deal with what needed to be dealt with. I started to write. And go to the park. And listen to records. And play my guitar every night. Every time I wanted a man, I picked up my guitar. Every time I wanted a drink, I picked up a guitar. Love will take you to the darkest places but also to the most honest places if you let it. Learning how to love myself is something I've always been lousy with, and I spent some time on that. I thought about my sobriety, what that means to me, the struggles I'd had throughout the years, since I was a 27-year-old and hung up my toxic drinking habit. I thought about my mother, who took her own life when I was a baby, not far from my age at 30 years old, and I related to her more than ever. As you can see, there was plenty of time spent on my own. I didn't talk to that many folks, albeit a few close friends, and leaned into my family. I stayed away from men, and danced alone in the evenings looking out my window observing my humble and lively neighborhood. I found power in being by myself. I found peace in the people I was surrounded with - we didn't really know one another, but we smiled when passed on the street. One time I almost rear-ended an older woman in her car backing out of my driveway and I said, "Oh man, I'm just not used to any cars coming around this bend." She replied, "This is our little hideout, baby." And it really was. The woods were behind me, Dickerson Pike was in the front. So after a while, I had all these songs to play, and wanted to share them. I wanted to get out of town to get some distance from everything, so after an ongoing conversation with Michael Trent, I took my band to Johns Island, SC and we holed up for a few weeks. I poured my heart out, and trusted them with it, and these guys gave it right back. I think we all understood what it's like to question home, intention, demons, love.... I think most people understand that. I hope you love this record, I made it for you.